


The Library on Kings Street

by CreamofTomatoSoup



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: 1920's Universe, Alternate Universe, Drugs, Gen, Guns, Mafia AU, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Violence, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Slash, Smoking, Violence, brief non-consensual drug use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 21:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8549773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreamofTomatoSoup/pseuds/CreamofTomatoSoup
Summary: The Hoshidians run a natural medicines shop.  The Nohrians are the Mafia.A series of one-shots.





	

Niles seriously only came here for drugs.

Odin is god knows where, which is a blessing, but the lady who usually runs the counter is absent and in her place is a boy, about their age, who’s engaging Leo in a heated discussion about war philosophy. They’ve started on something vaguely Latin-sounding, which means they’re going to be here for hours, and Niles needs a smoke. 

Unfortunately, he is bound by duty and threat of a painfully slow death to not leave Leo unattended. He wouldn't have taken this job if he knew it was going to be babysitting with guns.

“You can't just let war be definiable for anything!” Leo says. _“On War_ clearly states-”

“Clausewitz thought the only real organization of peoples was a nation-state,” the boy states flatly. Leo's ears flush red. Niles can count the number of people who can do that to Leo on one hand.

“His work still clearly applies,” Leo snarls, and Niles stops trying to follow their conversation. 

His eyes wonder around the tea shop, glancing out each of the windows out of habit. All clear, as usual. The Nohr's own this street, along with half the surrounding neighborhoods; it's not like anyone was going to try anything _here._

Niles sort of wonders why these people have moved here. The last shopkeeper here had been cleaved nearly in half by one of Camilla's bodyguards, and yet barely a month later a newly immigrated Japanese family had settled in, mopped up the bloodstains, and set up a natural medicines shop. Niles has only seen two of them so far, the fine, older lady and a man a little older than them. The boy is new.

He's got a pile of black hair tucked into the longest ponytail Niles has ever seen, but there are some short tufts sticking out the back, like someone took a knife to the top layer of the boy's hair. Niles wonders if that was a deliberate choice or if the boy had been mugged.

Who chops off the top layers of a person's hair, Niles muses.

“Prove it,” Leo hisses, slamming a palm down on the counter. Hoo, boy, they appear to have reached an impasse.

“Gladly,” the boy snarls in reply, and then turns and starts yelling Japanese at the back of the shop. Leo stands up straighter and starts shrugging his jacket so it sits more comfortably around his shoulders.

“Whoa, wait, wait,” Niles says, suddenly alarmed, “Are we going somewhere?”

“The library,” Leo growls, “So I can show this _imbecile_ how grossly incorrect he is.”

The boy rips a jacket from behind the counter with far more force than necessary. “Excuse me for daring to disagree with the boy with a spoon stuck up his ass!”

Leo bristles like an offended cat. Niles watches his chances of a smoke go up in flames. He despairs.

A girl appears in the back doorway as though summoned by shouting. She looks about ten years old, with black hair falling to just a bit past her chin and the widest eyes Niles has ever seen. The boy speaks rapidly to her, pulling his jacket around his shoulders. Whatever he says makes her expression pale and terrified.

“Be good,” the boy finishes in English, and makes his way out from around the counter. Leo stands stiffly to the side, shoving the door open for the boy in a pantomime of polite behavior.

Niles looks at the little girl in despair. She gives him a similar expression.

“I just wanted a smoke,” he tells her morosely.

And this sweet, sweet, child of maybe ten, with her wide, frightened eyes, pops a bundle of cigarettes up onto the countertop.

\---

Leo knows he has a reputation to uphold. Leo knows that he is a member of the honorable Nohr family. He knows he shouldn't get distracted collecting the Hoshido's protection money just because some kid barely off the boat is a bit mouthy.

But. Listen. This guy?

Is. _An. Asshole._

Leo scowls deeper as they march into the library, the boy sweeping ahead with his stupid river of black hair and his stupid little glasses and his stupid face. The boy had the audacity to _lead_ like Leo didn't know the way to the _goddamn library on Kings Street._ The Nohrs _owned_ King Street.

“Sir,” Niles says softly, appearing at his elbow, “I'll be waiting outside?”

Leo isn't quite angry enough not to realize that this would leave him with no bodyguards while walking with a stranger, but _for God's sake this was practically his library he was in here all the time who does this bastard think he is._

This person might be getting under Leo's skin. Just a little bit. 

He jerks his head in assent and lets Niles melt away anyway, because he's angry and being a little bit foolish and Odin is supposed to find them around this time. Leo can handle this twerp until he gets here.

\---

The person behind the counter is definitely not Ryouma.

“Hello,” Xander says, amused. The little girl peers up at him with wide, frightened eyes. “Are your parents in?”

“Mother is-“ the girl frowns in concentration, biting her lip. “Mother is busy. Father dead. Tea?”

Oh, Xander thinks.

The girl stares up at him. She’s fiddling with her hands; after a moment, she reaches up and tucks some of her dark hair behind her ear. It slips free and falls in her eyes again. 

“Tea?” she asks again, more nervously. She has the same sharp accent as Ryouma, the funny way of pronouncing each syllable individually like she's stringing clips of sound together.

“Ah, no,” says Xander. “Chloroform?” his treacherous tongue adds before his brain can inform it that this is a child.

“Oh!” the girl exclaims, her hands suddenly thrown wide in excitement. “For kidnap?”

Xander tries to process this. He really does. The child before him doesn’t look much older than eight.

“Yes,” he says weakly.

“Kidnap!” the girl repeats, looking pleased. “Yes. Stop- uh. Hm. Stay.”

She scrambles off before Xander can figure out what she means. He hovers awkwardly by the empty counter.

There’s a jar on one of the shelves behind the counter. It has eyeballs in it. Xander ponders briefly if the Hoshido’s collected them and if he should pull a pair off whatever poor sap Iago was detaining. Would Ryouma appreciate that sort of thing?

The girl returns holding a jar with both hands, looking pleased. It looks like it’s filled with urine.

“For kidnap!” the girl says.

Xander takes the jar slowly. It has the consistency of honey. It definitely isn’t chloroform.

“… Thank you?” he asks.

“Welcome home,” spouts the girl.

\---

Takumi cannot believe how much of a fucking prick this child is.

His hair is yellow, chopped and short, and he's taller than Takumi by about a head, which shouldn't bother Takumi, they've been in the States for almost two months now and everyone's taller here, but he sweeps his eyes down with a sneer at Takumi from his extra inches of height and it's so condescending and _Takumi swears if this keeps up he's going to commit murder._

He's not. Going to commit murder, that is. The boy is obviously a part of the yellow-headed family that comes in on a regular basis and buys liquid cal mag and distilled wisteria and Takumi's not an idiot, they're clearly the States version of the yakuza and Takumi doesn't have a death wish. This guy's just _such. A. Bastard._

Well, he does have a death wish, but he's not going to die for the pleasure of this brat.

“... not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter,'” the yellow-headed boy finishes triumphantly. “You can't have a war without two clearly defined opposing sides.”

“First,” Takumi snaps, dragging from context clues that he's talking about _On War_ again, “That isn't even what that quote says! Second, Clausewitz is a blubbering idiot-”

“Excuse me?” the boy demands, bristling, and Takumi hates him.

Mother would say hate's a strong word and Takumi can still feel the ache behind his eyes from the months before moving, the gaping empty space where Father and Kamui used to be, and he knows hate he's felt it before and he feels it now, and he knows that this isn't hate, it's just a deep disgust for this boy who has clearly never felt suffering in his life, and the only hate he can feel is directed inwards at where he so completely fails at being a good brother, a good son, a good human being-

“You heard me,” Takumi spits, and tries to channel the spiky, poisonous feeling in him into something productive. Like crushing this boy in debate.

\---

 _“Blasphemy!”_ someone howls.

Xander frowns at the jar of not-chloroform in his hand. It oozes slowly across the glass when he tilts it. It's in no hurry. It sits there in Xander's hand as innocently as anything piss-colored can.

“A crime of utmost horror! To be so swiftly defeated, to be so thoroughly thrashed! _A sin!”_

Leo comes around the corner, his bodyguards trailing behind him like the tail of a comet. His face is twisted like he's eating a lemon. Behind him, the former thief looks oddly distant and thoughtful. No one is in any shape to stop the other one.

_“Agh, truly we have fallen upon a most darkest hour!”_

“Hello, Leo,” Xander says, deciding not to correct the bodyguard's abhorrent use of grammar. “Is everything alright?”

Leo gives him the stinkeye. “Why do you have a jar of piss?”

Xander is immune to Leo's prickliness by now. Well, no, he's not, but he can pretend to be. There are more important things to worry about.

“It's knock-out juice,” Xander replies.

Leo sniffs. “Does it work?”

 _He's not mad at you,_ Xander tells himself. _Something's not going his way and he's prickly about it. That's all. Don't hit your brother._

Xander shrugs instead. He has amazing self control.

“Hm,” huffs Leo, and then he snatches the jar from Xander with quick hands. Xander's voice takes on a commanding edge. “Leo.”

Leo's immune to it. He cracks open the jar and dabs his finger inside. It smells a bit like mint and horse urine.

“Truely, we have lost a battle of honor-” Leo's bodyguard continues. 

Leo turns and wipes his finger under his bodyguard's nose. The loud man inhales deeply, probably to protest, and then his eyes roll up in his head and he collapses like a ragdoll. The former thief lets out a long satisfied sigh, like he's hearing silence for the first time.

 _“Leo!”_ Xander barks, managing to keep his voice from squealing.

Leo watches the fallen bodyguard for a moment, like he thinks the man will spring up and continue spouting nonsense at any moment. When he doesn't Leo nods grudgingly. “Nice knock-out piss.”

“You can't just _drug your goddamn bodyguard-”_

“He's my bodyguard,” Leo said sulkily.

“You have literally no means of defending yourself!”

“I have _some,”_ Leo grouches, despite how blatantly untrue that is. While Leo is a truly amazing spymaster and torturer, even Elise can cream him in a hand-to-hand fight. It's pretty bad.

Xander ignores Leo's token attempt at lying. “That man is the only one of you that can actually fight-”

“Niles can shoot, and he's decent with a knife. Right Niles?”

The former thief makes a vaguely affirmative noise, and continues staring into the middle distance like he's experiencing a midlife crisis. Xander almost gives him a disbelieving look until he remembers this particular problematic young man is unrelated to him, and raises his eyebrows at Leo instead. 

Leo's expression only scowls deeper. The only indication that he's running out of arguments is that he takes a moment to form his next point. “We're in the middle of our own _home._ It's not like Anankos is going to burst through the walls-”

“Oh Dios,” Xander groans, sliding his hands over his face, because now he can absolutely see that happening. “Please don't say such things-”

“The outer walls are three feet thick,” Leo says, making tight, barely controlled gestures. “The last person Father didn't like is literally _still in the garden on a spike.”_

“We really ought to take that down before the cops call again,” Xander mumbles into his palms.

“No one's going to hurt us here. There's no need for a fighting man!” Leo throws his hands wide. “And he's been talking non-stop for the past hour.”

Xander exhales. Inhales. Drops his hands from face.

“Go to your room,” he says.

“What?” Leo snarls.

“You can go to your room and stay there until Odin-” thank god, he remembered the man's name- “rejoins us.”

Leo sputters. It's been such a long time since he's been incoherent that Xander would be pleasantly surprised if Leo also wasn't going through the murder-y version of a teenage phase.

“You're not my _parent!”_ Leo shouts, but he starts stomping toward the stairs. “You certainly aren't my _mother!”_

“Él es su abuela,” Niles murmurs, trailing after his master and charge. As he passes, Xander realizes the former thief's eyes are half lidded and the pupils are blown wide.

“Yes! Yes he is!” Leo cries, throwing his hands up into the air, and stomps up the stairs and flees into the upper levels of the house. Niles follows him with the air of someone walking on clouds. “Except I would respect my abuela!”

Xander sighs and slumps in their absence. The jar of horse-urine-honey-knockout juice has been left behind, so he picks it up and screws the lid back on. Leo usually wasn't that dramatic. Who had he been hanging out with?

Something near his foot snuffled. Xander swung his handknife out before he saw who it was.

They had left Odin on the floor.


End file.
